Background

The Thomas Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) was developed by Dr Thomas Hendrickson in 1958. Thomas integrated the PPA into its product suite in 1981.

PPA provides an insight into how people behave at work and helps individuals to become more aware of their own work style and that of others. PPA is used for a variety of purposes: recruitment, retention, development, management, career guidance, benchmarking, appraisal and team analysis.

Theory

Hendrickson based the PPA on a theory of human consciousness proposed by William Moulton Marston.

Marston’s theory states that actions based upon emotions are an individual’s biosocial response to supportive or hostile social environments. These actions determine how the individual interacts with the environment. The way in which the individual interacts with the environment takes four basic directions: tendencies to dominate, influence, submit and comply, which forms the acronym ‘DISC’. Marston published his book ‘Emotions of Normal People’ in 1928, which described his theory of human consciousness, more commonly known as the ‘DISC’ theory. His theory stemmed from two schools of thought – physiological and psychoanalytic.

Thomas Hendrickson developed the PPA based on Marston’s theory in 1958 as a self report system for the workplace.

The PPA determines whether individuals see themselves as responding to workplace situations that they perceive to be favourable or hostile/challenging, and reveals whether their response patterns are active or passive; thus classifying the individual’s behavioural preferences in terms of four domains: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.

The PPA is registered with the British Psychological Society (BPS) after it was audited against the technical criteria established by the European Standing Committee on Tests and Testing, part of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations.

Format

In order to complete the PPA, individuals choose two trait adjectives from a block of four, one ‘most like’ and one ‘least like’ them. This process is repeated 24 times, giving 48 choices from a total of 96 words.

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